Journal Entry, Week Nine

This week I chose to discuss the three statements option, because I agreed with them for the most part, but I wanted to add how they weren’t always true.

Managers are paid to take chances with decisions. Researchers are paid to reduce the risk of making those decisions.

I can agree with the general sentiment of this statement since it is basically true, but I do have an addendum to it. Most managers decisions are not high risk, they know what the outcomes will be most of the time since they wouldn’t roll the dice constantly with their jobs. Researchers on the other hand are definitely funded to reduce risk and promote business interest by using that data to make more intelligent decisions or produce better goods.

A business strategy can be no better than the information on which it is formulated.

This is definitely true since strategies that have no data before hand usually fail spectacularly and it only makes sense, because how can you plan to react to something you are blind too. Knowledge is power and businesses will pay almost any cost to be informed, because the more you know the more likely your decisions lead to success. If we look at Google and Facebook who have no product to sell except peoples personal information, I think we can all agree they seem to be doing pretty well. So any business strategy that is formulated better be informed since no one wants to fail at any of their endeavors especially if a lot of money is on the line.

The purpose of research is to solve business problems.

The purpose of research is not just to solve business problems, but I must admit almost all research is profit driven. Businesses pay a lot of money to discover new things or have an advantage over others. This leaves little room for non-profit research which almost never make any real progress, because of a lack of funds. So although the statement could be argued as mostly true, I had to point out that its not an absolute